


Lay Your Heart on the Scale

by nonky



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 09:08:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16807645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonky/pseuds/nonky
Summary: They were both married. Any extraneous feelings Lee felt were only as bad as Kara's desperation to figure out where his heart was weighted. Back when it tilted her way, she could have had him on a platter with a rose in his teeth.





	Lay Your Heart on the Scale

Lee Adama was in love.

Kara didn't know how it hit her first, or how stupid she'd been to miss it before. She thought it was probably as honest a mistake as she could make with Lee. There were so many things they'd been pretending not to feel, the context of disbelief was their default. 

It should have either hurt her earlier, or not at all. It should have been obvious, especially for her. Kara knew what it meant when Lee's voice turned tender and his eyes lingered across a woman's face. She knew it meant something when he said her name with a tiny inflection that savoured it on his tongue. 

Maybe it was just a mental block she'd built around the idea of being the only one he loved. She'd never been a wonderful student. There were people adept at just one thing and her thing was flying. It wouldn't make sense to be a prodigy with machines and cold physics and have acute perception of human beings. 

Gods, she felt stupid for letting the thought bloom in her empty head. Assumptions were much more comfortable. She wasn't with Lee, and technically it shouldn't matter. They were just inching back to being friends, and it was a deeply personal question.

It wasn't fair to ask about the other woman. Lee had long ago stopped making his polite inquiries about Sam. The sands and mud of New Caprica had been shitty for farming but great for drawing line after line after line. Kara had woken up in her marriage bed one morning to find all her lines had made a box that strongly resembled the bars of a cage. 

If she were going to ask about the other woman, she should know what she wanted to hear. If he cared enough to lie to keep the peace, that might mollify her queasy indecision. But if Lee was all defiance and proudly declared himself a man in love, what right did Kara have to argue?

They were both married. Any extraneous feelings Lee felt were only as bad as Kara's desperation to figure out where his heart was weighted. Back when it tilted her way, she could have had him on a platter with a rose in his teeth. 

Competition for anything else energized her, but this was painful. She didn't deserve Lee, but that wasn't the same as not wanting him. She didn't deserve Sam, either, but her focus just wouldn't fix on her husband. If there was someone trying to steal Sam, she didn't even spend enough time with him to suspect.

Kara drank until her poisoned brain cells let her rest. She would leave it alone. There was great risk in asking and no obvious gain in hearing the truth. She would put it away with the frenzied collisions of body and soul that had scalded all the sweetness from their precious moments.

Age must have brought character and restraint, because she lasted most of a month. Lee brought her to his office to pick a fight about a pilot using a stunt she'd taught them mostly as a joke. Kara had been about to go off duty, her knee aching and her stomach sickly empty. 

"What do you have to say for yourself, Kara?!" He crossed his arms in that way - frakking condescending son of a bitch that he was. Always right Lee Adama, cautious and true Lee Adama, lousy cheating liar Lee Adama loving somebody else-

Kara shattered. She kicked past one of his flimsy chairs and jabbed his chest with her finger. 

"You're in love with her!" It had never been a question, she discovered. It was a volcanic spew of unwilling knowledge. It turned the world inside out, and the floor was lava. Kara would have cried if she wasn't so angry. 

His face dropped into shock, blankness begging for a slap. Lee frowned at her once he sorted out what she meant, and said, "Dee? I'm in love with my wife? Is that your problem with me? Gods, Kara, that's insane!"

"Isn't that your problem with me? Hasn't that always been the problem," she gasped. Something was goading her to keep shoving and poking at him, pick and scratch until she at least had his blood. 

Lee lifted his hand and wrapped it around her wrist, softly dipping fingertips up into her sleeve. He shook his head. 

"The problem has always been we loved each other, but instead of just doing that we played chicken until we frakked it up," he said carefully. "Dee came later, and so did Sam. None of this is their fault. It's all on us."

He almost never lied, even to spare her feelings. Kara hated that she couldn't hate him for it. She wanted to pull away but her arm folded uselessly. They were alone in his office, and - frak her for noticing - his wife was on duty for hours yet.

"Do you love her more than . . . "

The look he gave her was scathing. Lee twisted his mouth bitterly. "How would I do that? I love her with what I had left."

She loved Sam like that, a little warmth balanced on the jagged cut. The void of Lee had become the dead sun of her dying galaxy. Her husband was the last home capable of sustaining her, grounded in mud and Cylons. Kara had never understood how one of the Adamas hadn't even tried to talk her out of settling. The Admiral had been thrilled for her, as if he'd forgotten everything about her personality.

"They know about us," Kara said hoarsely. 

He nodded, his sharp jaw angling away and then back to her face. "It's not a secret, Kara. We were never that mysterious," he told her. "It's not that unusual. We were and then we weren't together, and now we're both married to other people. It's not strange that I love my wife. It's not strange that you love Sam. It's disgusting and I wish him dead regularly, but none of this is a wildly unique situation."

Their predicament had never made her feel special or privileged. Kara had shame over possessing feelings at all. She had known there were other people mixed in with her thing with Lee, but she'd never taken any of them seriously. Zak was dead, and then Sam was presumed so. Dee was sweet, kind and she apparently had a spine to rival the armour of the ship. No one else should have been able to survive, but their spouses were trying to hold on. 

Her slump made Lee let go of her arm and pull her closer. Kara got wet from the slide of his palm up to cup her elbow. She was ridiculous. They were the terrible people from old movies, breathing heavy from dry humping through their clothes. 

"What do we do now?" He was brutally reasonable and pragmatic. Lee would know what they should do next. He was immune to gossip and drama for the sake of diversion. He was the one who had always stopped them, put on the brakes when she just wanted to leap. 

Lee Adama went for her mouth like he hadn't had oxygen since the last time they kissed. He caught her by the back of the neck, hefting her like she was no bigger than a kitten. He bounded into her body, dragged her thigh until she stumbled into him and took them both to the floor. 

Kara found her answers somewhere in the fire of silently stripping one another and forgetting why they had ever fought. Lee was right. They weren't any different than countless other couples who wanted what they didn't have. She could settle for that.


End file.
